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"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong." --Abraham Lincoln

Trump says the darndest things!

Once again, I have occasion to blog about chutzpah- "that quality exhibited by a man who murders both of his parents and then begs for mercy on the ground that he's an orphan."

Donald Trump has always been the master of chutzpah. A supposedly monumental ego (which almost certainly, as in most such cases, covers up monumental insecurity about his own self-worth) combines with a breathtaking obliviousness to reality to produce more cheeky, jaw-dropping absurdities than any public figure I can think of since Baghdad Bob. Any day now I expect to read that old Bob is Il Duce's new press secretary!

I thought that he surely set a new record for chutzpah last night when he- Donald J. Trump, the Mouth that Walks- accused Hillary of lacking the temperament to be president and of frequently being "out of control!" The line drew derisive laughter from the audience and incredulity all over the world. But the Trump campaign has topped it.

Based largely on stacked, non-scientific polls like that on the page of the Trump-shilling Drudge Report, the Trump campaign is claiming that "all the polls" show that Trump won the debate last night! In fact, little Donald himself tweeted this morning

I won every poll from last nights Presidential Debate - except for the little watched @CNN poll.

Donald Trump destroyed himself last night. The American people got to see the joker for the incoherent, immature lightweight he is. As bad as Hillary is, and as much garbage as she spewed last night herself, she was debating Donald Trump. Only by picking her nose, drooling, giving Lester Holt the finger and using at least five different racial and ethnic slurs and seven obscenities n her first statement could she have allowed him to even be competitive.

Donald Trump is Donald Trump. He can't help himself. He raves. He jabbers. He interrupts. He overtalks people. Above all, he lies. But what he can't do is string words together into coherent sentences.

The irony, of course, is that last night's debacle came at an ironic moment. Nate Silver's "Now Cast" gave Trump an all-time-high 47.3% chance of winning the election. That's down the tubes now. Today Silver writes that Clinton's shellacking of the Orange One last night all but guarantees a bounce in the polls for the Queen of Darkness.

Now, I understand that all this can easily change. For one thing, there are still two debates to go. But if there's a lesson to be learned from last night, it's that Donald Trump has a hard time learning lessons. Trump is Trump. He can't be anything but what he is. He can't stay on message. He can't shut up and wait his turn. He can't help overtalking people, speaking without thinking, and generally making an ass of himself. He can't confine himself to the question without wasting his time by getting sidetracked into boasting about his own accomplishments, real or imagined.

He'll blow the last two debates, too. What we saw last night is simply who he is.

Donald Trump is a jackass, and he can't hide it. I am reassured that my original and persistent perception is right: that while Trump has a powerful appeal to ignorant, angry, prejudiced people, there is no way on this planet that he will ever convince a majority of the American people that the thought of him as President of the United States is anything other than ludicrous.